We have all observed program and project managers who are successful. They make it look so easy and to many it is easy, as they possess certain personality traits and skills that acclimate them well to the profession. But what are those traits and skills; and how do we identify them in our employees or candidates so we can build a strong program and project management team within our company.
Many others have written on the subject so below are excerpts that begin the list. This list also includes what I would call skills of project managers and typical tasks that makes program and project managers successful.
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They possess the gift of foresight |
Be completely obsessed with the Client. |
Command authority naturally. |
Clear Vision |
Be an extrovert |
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They're organized. |
Provide crystal clear project goals and be accountable. |
Possess quick sifting abilities, knowing what to note and what to ignore. |
The Ability to Delegate |
Display personal courage (lead from the front) |
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They know how to lead. |
Communicate clearly and effectively in all directions. |
Set, observe, and re-evaluate project priorities frequently. |
Possess charisma
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They're good communicators |
Define roles and responsibilities of all team members. |
Ask good questions and listen to stakeholders. |
Problem Solving Skills |
Be an enabler with a can do attitude |
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They're pragmatic |
Create a viable schedule with total team commitment. |
Do not use information as a weapon or a means of control. |
Leadership Competence |
Have a strong sense of teamwork |
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They're empathetic. |
Identify the big risk items and mitigate them early. |
Adhere to predictable communication schedules, |
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Prioritize ruthlessly. |
Possess domain expertise in project management as applied to a particular field. |
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Anticipate and accommodate change. |
Exercise independent and fair consensus-building skills when conflict arises |
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Challenge assumptions and self-imposed limitations. |
Cultivate and rely on extensive informal networks inside and outside the firm to solve problems that arise. |
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Manage the client’s expectations. |
Look forward to going to work! |
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Learn from experience and mistakes. |
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Have an attitude of gratitude and thank those who helped you succeed. |
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Many themes jump off the above lists including:
Leadership
Leadership is identified separately from management, as leadership is more of a personality trait whereas management is a learned skill. I recognize this is not a common view as many people and companies espouse courses in teaching leadership. Here, I am identifying people who can motivate others as projects are long endeavors, which invariably have points where the success of the project falls to the project manager who can keep the team motivated and get them past the sticky problems observed on nearly every project.
PMs also have to instill confidence in both their teams and the manager(s) to whom they report. As stated before, projects are long and difficult endeavors, which have plenty of challenges. When these challenges arise, PMs who are able to maintain the confidence of all interested parties have more success. When the confidence in the PM is shaken, executives tend to provide additional assistance to the teams that is a sure sign of lost confidence and adds additional effort to the project. The group of engineers will operate indepdently producing a fragmented solution.
People in general bring a set of implicit assumptions. These assumptions are not typically in the forefront of their minds but exist due to their life experiences both personally and professionally. These assumptions then drive the set of solutions they are able to envision. When a PM is able to identify these implicit assumptions, validate their relevancy to the unique project, then challenge them if need be, better solutions to problems are identified. These better solutions may be quicker and less risky to implement, require fewer resources or less highly skilled resources, or have a better impact on the business.
Management Skills
On all projects, there is a finite amount of administration that occurs and this to me is the management of the project. The management component of project or program management requires multiple skills as well as traits. The traits include the ability to organize. Projects inherently have lots of moving parts from end users and sponsors with thoughts, to technicians who have commercial applications to configure or code to write, to test teams and configuration managers who have plans and backend support systems to bring on line. All of these disparate groups must be brought together and coordinated so the project can move forward and eventually complete. The ability to organize the multiple teams is a personality trait inherent is successful program and project managers.
We also have to organize at a deeper level when dealing with the technology. The task of building a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a feat in organization when done well. Not only do business and technical executives have to understand both the strategy and tasking but also the technicians who will perform the work. Laying out a structure that is understood by both disparate sets of people is difficult at best. Now include the capability to track progress in a meaningful way for both groups and the need for deep organizing trait is paramount.
Closely related is the ability to plan, to foresee how a project will come together. Planning also includes what deliverables are needed, how and when to develop test plans, how many test plans are needed, what metrics are needed, and which resources execute which tasks in conjunction with each other. All of these are unique to each situation as the Statement of Work (SOW) or Project Charter is unique as well as the scope undertaken and the resources assigned to the project.
The ability to manage both your own time and the time of those working for you is critical. Projects have so many distractions making it very easy to head down a rabbit hole that derails the project. These typically happen during the development phases but can also occur at any phase. Contrary to popular belief, the highest risk time of a project is the beginning and not the end. Many times I use an analogy of catching a wave for a surfer. This is analogous to setting the scope and planning phases of a project. Once you catch the wave, the time to the beach is out of your hands as the wave is going at its own speed. You can make some moves that will have some impact on the timing but the base timing is already defined. Successful project managers take their time in planning and resist the temptation to get starting developing because time is short. Each project has numerous options on how to approach the work. It is this approach which is analgous to catching the right wave, that has the most dramatic impact on project timing and success.
Setting the priorities for individuals and managing to those priorities becomes a main activity during the majority of the project. This requires the PM to handle multiple tasks at the same time. The moment the first task is delegated, the PM is multi-tasking. If an individual tries to handle all tasks themselves, a project of any size is at risk. On a typical commercial software implementation, I will have the following threads open: 1) software configuration, 2) interface development, 3) conversion or data migration development, 4) custom software development, 5) communication with sponsors, 6) communications with consulting company management and sales, 7) project tracking and monitoring, and 8) potentially open core product issues or enhancement. The ability to manage your time, multi-task, and manage the team's time is a critical skill.
All projects include the use of teams. These teams include resources for which the PM has direct responsibility and other resources for which the PM does not have responsibility. All of these teams must come together and work toward the common goal of completing the project. The team will consist of not only these individuals but also the managers of the matrixed resources as they potentially have competing goals. The ability to create and motivate teams becomes a determining factor in the success of PMs.
Communication Skills
The ability to communicate in both written and verbal form both up and down the management chain is a widely known required skill. In the previous paragraphs and going forward the implication of communication skills jumps off the page. Let me delve into a couple of areas that are not as widely held. The first is with whom PMs communicate. I have mentioned the need to discuss topics with business and technical leaders as well as the technicians but what is also needed is the ability to define or clarify technical or business problems to the opposite group. Many times on a project I will come across a particularly difficult technical issue that either impacts the dates or is a risk to those dates. Naturally, both the technical and business leaders want to understand the problem. Given it is a technical issue in this case, discussing technical issues with technical people is easier than helping a business leader understand why the web application crashes because of Java Virtual Machine (JVM) Heap is exhausted and why this is a problem given the CFO just spend dollars increasing the memory on the application server. These are important topics for them to understand as well as the opposite. Helping the technicians understand why a good technical solution has dire consequences for the business side of the house.
PMs are also knowledge conduits. They should ensure that information from one team gets to all the other teams that need it. As project schedules get tight and the tension begins to increase, many people naturally focus on their tasks at hand to become more efficient and get their work done. A great thing for that individual task but what happens when the other teams need information from this one group and cannot get it. The other tasks naturally fall behind so the project falls behind. The PM that stays in touch with what all groups are going and moves the information between groups can more effectively keep all tasks moving and avoids disconnects when the “right” hand is not talking to the “left” hand.
Foresight and Vision
Some people have the innate ability to see the future. I am not talking about crystal balls or palm readers but a sense for the direction the project is headed and the ability to see risks and envision how all the elements of a project will come together in the end. I alluded to this concept in the planning section and it applies here as well. In conjunction with planning is the skill of defining goals for individuals that are in sync with the plan. In my post, “Staying on Schedule”, I spoke about intermediate milestones and mini-crisis as a mechanism for maintaining a schedule. The ability to foresee, define, and articulate these goals goes a long way toward staying on schedule and being successful.
Risk management is a key aspect of successful projects and is in many instances not well received as an integral part of a project. In many organizations and as an attempt to manage time, organizations only deal with issues and not risks. Many times, I have highlighted risks to be told we will deal with it when it becomes a problem. The personality trait to envision a risk and the capability to address the risk are key elements to success.
Pragmatic
As PMs we are constantly in the situation of making choices. Usually all day is spent making trade off choices between competing forces. There are times when we have to make a choice a deliverable is good enough, not perfect but good enough as it meets the business objectives. The prime example comes when dealing with the speed at which application pages are rendered. I routinely hear from end users and sponsors that I want the page to be as fast as possible. From a conceptual standpoint, this makes sense as speed of page rendering translates into efficiency of workers and eventually money. Fast as possible does not mean get 6 Cray super computers for my solution or that I want sub second response time on a page that is making two web service calls and returning a three table join query. Clearly, neither is going to happen. What was meant was to increase the speed until it reaches a good balance between cost, time and speed. This is not a straightforward decision. The technician would ask for the performance requirements so they know the solution to build; the businessperson wants a reasonable cost so the PM is in the position to determine what is good enough. The balance point falls to the PM and pragmatism is key.
Conflict is also a common occurrence on projects. It can be between two technicians, the test team, developers, the business people, etc. The ability to work through issues and even decide on what issues to engage is something critical to success. People can be passionate about what they believe in so getting past these points of contention whether it be negotiating a resolution, facilitating the discussion or deciding which battles to fight becomes important to success.
Can do attitude
In our world, there are people whose glass is half full and those whose glass is half empty. The perspective on adversity, challenges, and dealing with people go a long way toward success in a work environment that typically includes strict deadlines, changing requirements, heavy budget pressure and big business impacts when the project does not go well. A can do and positive attitude is a personality trait that serves PMs well dealing with adversity, the high-pressure situations, team building, and leadership. Finding this personality trait in a person serves them well in the profession of Program and Project Management.
In addition to the above list of skills and traits, I would add a personality trait of cool and thoughtful under pressure. Projects are intense, long, and difficult activities that have periods of time when the PM is under significant pressure due to impending deadlines, difficult issues, etc. People are also very passionate and so the PM is typically under a lot of pressure and must be able to think on their feet and remain thoughtful during the intense times. It is these times when PM can easily lose the confidence of management or their teams, lose control of scope, or any number of other occurrences that negatively impact the project.
There are three inputs in the table above I would not agree with:
- Be completely obsessed with the Client.
Client focus to a degree is a very good thing. In situations where the project manager is also managing a team and a contract then a proper balance between these many times competing agendas enables the project manager to not only meet the client goals but also individual and company goals. In these situations, the project manager has multiple people and organizations to which they report and must meet the goals of each individual and organization simultaneously to be successful.
2. Be an extrovert
Due to the need for extensive interaction with people, extroverts typically have these skills inherently. Individuals who straddle the introvert/extrovert category can also be successful as they can communicate and operate in the people centric situations. Strict introverts who prefer to work alone and on individual tasks will struggle in the PM role.
3. Display personal courage (lead from the front)
In my previous post, I discuss the relative timing of leading from the front and back. Different situations dictate assuming each style so both are needed and not just leading from the front.
The personality traits and skills needed for project managers to be successful are varied. When interviewing PM candidates and identifying internal candidates for a PM role, these people centric traits and skills are far more influential in the success of PMs. What may be interesting to many people is the lack of technical expertise as a main contributor to success. Certainly, technical and business expertises are needed for a project to be successful but are typically skills for others on the project. With the exception of enough domain knowledge to understand the business goals and to speak intelligently to business leaders, the other traits and skills are much greater contributors to the success of a Program or Project Manager.
